


Ice, Blood, & Bone

by postmortemtsarina



Series: Creature Features [1]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-04
Updated: 2016-11-04
Packaged: 2018-08-28 22:52:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,374
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8466028
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/postmortemtsarina/pseuds/postmortemtsarina
Summary: Mei fights a yeti. That's literally it.





	

One day over breakfast, D.Va told Mei that she thought she had woken from her decade-long cryogenic slumber not unlike Sleeping Beauty had hers.

“I just can’t imagine you doing it any other way,” the mech pilot said, spanking a bottle of sriracha until it upended its contents onto her potatoes, “You’re so dainty, like a snow fairy!”

Mei giggled into her chocolate muffin at the compliment, and refrained from mentioning how she had woken more like a bear from hibernation. How her fat had hung from her frame beneath her cold, dirty clothes and how she had lay paralyzed in front of the cryostasis chamber for at least a day as her body re-acclimated itself to functioning. If the emergency power in the research station hadn’t been restored sometime during her slumber, she would have starved to death among her coworkers’ inaccessible bodies.

Now, these memories returned to Mei like a faint breeze as she woke, speckled with cold pinpricks upon her face. She was familiar with this sensation: snowfall.

The climatologist grunted as she worked herself to a kneel and then surveyed her surroundings with a dawning terror as fresh blood trickled over her temple.

Before her rose the jagged, sparking wing of the aircraft she and the team had been aboard.

Right: they had been in transit to Nepal to pick up Zenyatta from the Shambali monastery. He had been gone for the week, downloading a system update from the Iris. Nobody knew the omnic monk even needed updates besides Genji, much less what that implied about the ever mysterious Iris, but Tracer gladly flew him in.

Mei had positively begged to come along once she learned the weather conditions would be ideal for climbing and Winston had eventually relented, allowing her to make a weekend of it while Tracer and Genji stayed with the monks in the temple village.

Mei realized too late that she should have taken her own damn forecast rather than trust the one online.

“It’s fine,” Tracer waved off Mei’s concerns as she took the craft through a mountain pass to cut off some of the stronger winds, “I’ve flew through worse. You’re probably gonna have to put your excursion on the backburner though, love.”

Mei was about to say that being able to go climbing wasn’t her primary concern when a heavy thunk on the roof of the craft threw off Tracer’s maneuver around a cliff side and instead sent the belly of it into the thick snow. The craft bounced off the next mountainside with a whine and Genji was shook from his sleep mode, tanto knife primed for combat.

“Hang on!” Tracer shouted wrenching the controls upwards to steer the aircraft away from certain destruction, “I think a boulder tumbled onto us!”

Before Genji or Mei could answer her, there were more thunks like an elephant’s footsteps across the ceiling.

“That is no boulder,” Genji gulped, the sound slightly electronic.

The equilibrium of the craft was further disturbed as one of its wings was suddenly torn away, the crew watching helplessly as the metal disappeared behind them.

“What the hell?!” Tracer screamed, throwing off her seat belt and throwing herself against the controls to key something in. “I’m engaging the emergency hover jets, prepare for evacuation!”

As Mei strapped on the parachute found under her seat, she looked up and out the window… and into glowing red eyes.

That was all she could remember for now, using the stuck panel of the wing to get to her feet. A weak ‘chirr’ from behind, nearly lost to the whistle of the mountain winds, reminded her she wasn’t alone.

“Snowball!” Mei slung around her backpack to check on her drone, “Are you okay?”

Snowball chirped happily but was cut off by a weak shower of sparks. Its dome was dented, and one of its jets were damaged, hanging from its body by a cable.

“Oh, snowball…” Mei held the drone close before checking her surroundings again. Where were Tracer and Genji? Were they safe? They couldn’t be dead...

Could they?

Mei held up Snowball. It was in no shape to fly, but if she could just repair its jet she might be able to send it out to look for her teammates. Or even better: for help for all three of them.

As Mei walked to the edge of the ledge she had landed upon, she unclipped the parachute from the emergency backpack it came with. There were rations and first aid inside, so she ought to keep it around. Discarded parachute flapping in the wind behind her, she took a quick inventory of her pockets and utility belt. In addition to the emergency backpack, she had three backup fuel cells for Snowball, a small box of replacement spikes for her hiking boots, a rope, one large hook, some spare carabiners, a large pocket knife, and her endothermic blaster. Said weapon should be extra deadly to foes in the extra cold weather. Now all she needed were some repair tools.

“Oh, what I would do for a thermos of tea,” she whimpered as she looked over the ledge, searching for the rest of the aircraft. If she could locate it, she could secure more supplies and continue her look for her friends and help.

Then, she heard it.

What had started as a low rumble, thought to be a distant avalanche or wind pressure, had increased to a beastly purr. Heavy and familiar feet crunched through the snow: four strong legs. Mei was afraid to turn around and make eye contact. Best case scenario it was a Himalayan brown bear, which she knew she could take, but it sounded more simian, almost man-like…

‘Bite the bullet or die by it,’ she thought urgently.

Mei turned around in time with the footsteps and then froze. Literally this time.

The beast lunged at her cryogenic cocoon as she watched, safe but helpless. It had to have been at least nine feet tall standing up, coated in shaggy white fur and dark blue skin. Fangs and claws an off-white, the monster struck the ice, carving light grooves out of it with the strength that even a bullet or explosion could not muster, coming away with blood as a pen-sized claw got embedded in the barrier.

Mei watched and her slowed heart dropped as the force caused her to crest the ledge and tumble down the cliff, the beast roaring and beating its chest with animalistic vigor.

Thankfully, the cryogenic shield held fast against the impact of hitting the chilled valley deep within the sharp peaks before it shattered and flung her into the waist-deep snow.

“Jerk,” she mumbled, getting up and forging her way through the drift. She hoped the beast had not visited any of her friends, or that at the very least they had better luck with it than she.

_‘If they had better luck with that thing than me, it would be cut in half,’_ she thought forlornly. After some thought, she returned to the small crater where she fell and retrieved the claw from the softened chunks of ice.

Through the nightmarish fog of the no-man’s valley, Mei saw fire and her heart leapt.

“Hello?” She yelled, “Hello?! Genji? Tracer? Is anyone there?”

When Mei finally waded her way to the dwindling source of heat, nobody was there to meet her. But something was.

Mei pulled herself out of the snow and onto the wreck of the aircraft, surveying the damage. It had suffered more damage than she remembered, putting some context to the head injury that she had healed away in the icicle. Beaten like a piñata, the aircraft spilled debris and equipment into the snow.

Mei crawled into the craft and dug around the bent panels and snapped tech to pull out a hiking backpack and two of the heavy metal first aid cases. She wouldn’t be able to carry it all, so it would be best to do Snowball’s repairs here.

She looked up to the sky, where the peak of the mountains were cut off by the thick fog and encroaching night, and roped the beast’s claw to her blaster. If it came again, she’d be ready for it.


End file.
